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Information Size: an Analogy


A bit is a "yes" or a "no".

One character is 8 bits or one byte.

The longest word to appear in the Macquarie Dictionary is dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane; it contains 31 characters or 248 bits.

An average size novel contains about 500,000 characters.
Our novel contains 500 KB or 4 Mbits.

An encyclopedia corresponds approximately in size to 2500 novels.
Our encyclopedia contains 1,25 Gb or 10 Gbits.

A library has many books and encyclopedias.
Let's assume that an average size library contains 6250 Gb or 50 Tbits.


We can now create a similar table to the table of the previous page.

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